Edible Apple

Somewhat lost amidst the hoopla surrounding Apple’s press release announcing Steve Jobs’ medical leave of absence was a juicy and rumor-filled blogpost from Engadget this weekend. The gadget blog, citing multiple sources with a history of divulging accurate information, writes that that the iPad 2 will most likely hit store shelves in April. This jives with a recent iPad rumor which pegged the iPad 2 release to happen on either April 2 or April 9.

But there’s more to the iPad 2 story than relatively boring release date information.

Engadget was told that the iPad 2 screen won’t be a replica of the iPhone 4’s Retina Display, but that the tablet will nonetheless sport a “super high resolution” screen. Toss in the universally agree upon inclusion of dual sided cameras and we’re off to a good start.

Delving further, Engadget’s sources “say with near certainty’ that the iPad 2 will feature a dedicated built-in SD card slot but will not have a USB slot as was previously rumored.

“The new iPad,” Engadget continues, “will feature a dual GSM / CDMA chipset produced by Qualcomm and will mark Apple’s shift away from Infineon as its chipset maker to Qualcomm for all of its mobile devices. It’s not clear if the chipset being used will be based on the company’s EV-DO / HSPA Gobi variety or an entirely new design. Presumably, the strength of the new dual-mode chipset is that it will allow both Verizon and AT&T to offer the iPad simultaneously.”